Chapter 12

9-20-13, 11:54 A.M.

As Jeremy woke up, he looked over to see that the papers were still there, untouched. Relieved, he got some clothes on, and headed over for work, taking the papers with him.

His day at the office was fairly uneventful. Occasionally, a changeling would wander through the portal to stare at his work, at which he stared back until they left. Eventually, the changelings got the memo to not disturb him, and stayed on the other side of the portal. Just in case, Jeremy kept his loaded shotgun on the desk - after all, they might try something. Meanwhile, he worked on some possible designs for the love machine, focusing mainly on the emitter and the power source.

To be honest, he still didn’t trust Chrysalis – her surprisingly honest and straightforward manner with him might be nothing but another ploy to lull him into a sense of false security. Jeremy needed some kind of trump card – something he could pull out and Chrysalis couldn’t outwit. With that in mind, he checked the portal to the changeling hive. Evidently, Chrysalis and the others were out – her personal hive was empty. Good – although mightn’t they be invisible? Jeremy turned on the infrared camera on his glasses and looked around. Nothing, so they likely were out. Just to make sure, he checked under his desk, around the room in the various hiding corners and blind spots, and for good measure he poked his head through the portal to check there.

He was entirely alone. Excellent. Jeremy pulled out a new sheet of paper and began drawing a rough sketch of the same blueprint as before. However, he began messing with the wires, wiring them to all sides of the chassis and insulating each face of the cuboid design from the others. He then placed all of the inner components on the bottom of the device, leaving a significant empty space in the top. This was soon taken up by a rough drawing of a powdery substance, and a small notation “2 Al + Fe2O3” over it. Into this powdery area, he put a long strip which he labeled “Mg” connected to a wire labeled “NiCr”, and connected this to the power source and a magical receiver – it was basically an infrared receiver, but much more long-distance, although the nature of the device prevented it from transmitting any serious power. That was okay, as Jeremy only needed a binary switch. After making a few technical edits for completeness, Jeremy thought about where to hide this blueprint, so that Chrysalis wouldn’t find it. In a drawer? No, that was easily searched. How about his suit – it was looking pretty inconspicuous over there in the corner… Hmm. No, this wouldn’t work – there was no location here that was protected enough. Jeremy did a quick check around for any changelings that might have invisibly wandered into his room, and of course found none. He was beginning to be a little too paranoid…

Just then, he had the perfect idea. He scribbled a note on a folded-in-half piece of paper, saying “Out for errand – be back soon! (Do not touch anything while I’m gone)”. Next, he set off towards the castle.

It was a rare event to see Jeremy outside of his defined quarters – ordinarily he only ventured out for mealtimes and to enter and leave the office complex. Even rarer, he actually entered the castle this time, checking the front door to see if Twilight and her friends were around. Satisfied that they were not, he headed up the stairs to the royal quarters. This was done in full view of Princess Celestia, who’s throne was right inside the front door. Apart from looking at him curiously, she did nothing, and Jeremy gave a casual nod to her as he went upstairs.

It was easy enough to find Luna’s door – all but hers and Celestia’s had numbers on them. He slipped the correct blueprints under the door, and calmly left.

To disguise the true intent of his mission, Jeremy next stopped at a small eatery to pick up a snack – just a small chocolate chip cookie. He had received his first pay from Luna a short while earlier, consisting of an enormously heavy sack of gold coins dropped on his front step. For a while, Jeremy had wondered why no one had stolen it yet – after a cup of cold water and breakfast, he had quickly remembered that theft was pretty much nonexistent in Equestria. Thankfully, food and other such consumable goods were cheap – even so, he was an unusually conservative spender. Long teenage years of having to earn only a few tens of dollars had taught him to save whatever money he had, and he hated asking favors.

Munching contentedly on the chocolate chip cookie, he noticed it was evening – Luna was probably already up and preparing to raise the moon. He was distracted from this by a soft mental laughter. Luna? he mentally queried.

Yes? she answered, surprising him.

…How are we using telepathy? I certainly don’t have that power, Jeremy commented.

But we do, she reminded him. We saw thy blueprint – it is good. We were at first afraid that thou had been taken unawares by Chrysalis’s spell, but we are now assured thou art still thyself. Jeremy wasn’t sure what to say to that – clearly a whole lotta mistrust was going on between parties.

Yeah, I was meaning to ask you about that at dinner. Is there a way to hide my memories of that from outside parties? After all, if you can read my mind, she almost definitely can as well. In response, he got a vague feeling of surprise – on Luna’s end, presumably. Telepathy was weird – he was having a hard time distinguishing her emotions from his.

After a pause, Luna answered. Yes, we can, she affirmed. Jeremy felt a vague tingling in his head – a bit like something was either tickling or mildly electrocuting his frontal lobes. There. Now, no one else but us can access thy mind – not without some serious magical power.

Jeremy smiled slightly, and replied Good. Hey, how long-distance does this connection get? Luna appeared to think for a while.

We do not think there is a limit, she answered. Jeremy noted this in mild surprise, and continued walking back to his office.

To his surprise, when he got back, Chrysalis was lounging about. “Oh, hey Chrysalis,” he greeted as he sat down and opened a game to play. Thankfully, a few years of drama class and an additional few years of high school had rendered him so blasé in attitude that Chrysalis didn’t even notice anything was wrong.

“Hello. So, this is the finished thing, hmm?” Chrysalis said while examining the fake blueprint.

“Yep,” Jeremy affirmed indifferently. He stopped at a particularly well-lit screenshot and began to draw, making careful and light strokes across the blank sheet of paper.

“Pretty well-done… now, if only they’d been willing to give us this technology before,” Chrysalis angrily spat.

“I don’t think they knew it was there themselves – even though they had all the pieces, I don’t think anyone would have ever thought to put them together.” Chrysalis considered this, but her lip quickly went back to curling in disgust.

“More likely they did, and didn’t do anything – with all those Cutie Marks, somepony was bound to have the idea.”

Jeremy looked up at her, glaring slightly. “Girl, you need to move on. We’re giving you what you want, and letting you off the hook in the bargain – one would think you’d be grateful!”

Slightly taken aback, Chrysalis stared at him for a moment. Then she finally dropped her eyes. “Right,” she muttered darkly. Jeremy grimaced, and paused for a moment to get some particularly specific details down.

“It’s not good to hold grudges,” he finally said. Chrysalis looked at him disbelievingly. “Yeah, I know. Everyone hears that, all the time. But I know from experience. You think your army were the first casualties I ever made?” he asked Chrysalis. Confused by the change of subject, she slowly shook her head. “Right. Before you guys, I had to deal with a bunch of idiot terrorists who thought it’d be a good idea to raid a school. And… I killed all of them.” It had only been a short time, perhaps a week or so since the Incident, but talking about it was still hard for Jeremy. It was probably going to be hard for a long time – maybe even the rest of his life.

Chrysalis was looking at him in an expression of shock. “You humans kill your own?” Jeremy nodded.

“No one else to kill, really – with us being the only sentient species on our planet, eventually someone’s going to want someone else dead. And we made a lot of dumb excuses – the color of your skin, your sexual preference, or even your religion – even though religion’s not really a thing here, so maybe you wouldn’t know what that is? Anyway, getting off topic. Point is, yeah, we’ve been killing each other since our beginnings. Back to the story. So, I killed a lot of people in that week. I don’t even know the full count – I know it was somewhere over 50, and probably closer to 100 – they were evidently expecting full national attention, holding out for weeks or months, or something like that. Heh. Guess they weren’t expecting me.” At that, Chrysalis could only smile. “But at the end of the day, now that I’m home, and safe, and alive – I don’t really hate them. Sure, they tried to kill me, and my friends. And, yeah, at a lot of points they nearly succeeded. But really, they weren’t the ones at fault. Their upbringing was probably at fault – they believed we were evil, and the enemy, and we were responsible or were going to be responsible for the death of something they loved – I didn’t pay too much attention. And, hell, maybe they were right – as far as countries go, America isn’t as high and moral out in the international arena as the civilians think it is. But they were fighting for their ideals, and I was fighting for mine – and I just happened to win.”

Chrysalis thoughtfully considered this, and Jeremy mentally cringed at the thought of what she must be thinking of his long and esoteric tangent. “So… are you saying I shouldn’t blame them for not thinking of it, because they weren’t taught to?” she clarified.

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. All these ponies have been taught to think of changelings as 'the enemy', as nothing more than love-sucking monsters. So it’s no surprise that they didn’t want to help – they probably thought you would just eat them or something.” Chrysalis made a disgusted face, and Jeremy chuckled. “So, we’re going to change that,” he said. “Give them something to think about – maybe if changelings weren’t so hung up with stealing love, they’d actually be cool to hang with, hmm?”

Chrysalis smiled appreciatively. “And you think this will work?” Jeremy rolled his eyes.

“Please. They forgave Princess Luna for the Nightmare Moon incident, they forgave Discord for his shenanigans… I think you’ll do just fine.” Chrysalis’ smile turned into a joyful grin, and in that moment Jeremy truly felt terrible for deceiving her.

9-20-13, 7:02 P.M.

Chrysalis left shortly thereafter, to attend to her “queenly duties”. Jeremy packed up his stuff and took an early leave – he had a bit of time before dinner to practice singing. He could always opt out – but he felt he owed it to Luna to at least try. Suit in hand, he headed for his own home.

When he reached his apartment, he closed the door. He went into the bathroom, and slipped the suit on. Wondering how to switch it to the appropriate song, and then how to generate an instrumental from that, he was surprised when it began doing it on its own. He began to sing along, quietly at first – barely a whisper, really. Then louder. Then, as a smile broke out onto his face, louder.

At dinner, hardly a word was exchanged between him and any other person at the table – business as usual. Besides, the grilled vegetables were delicious and he would not hear a word otherwise. As he put his plates away, Luna approached him. “So, before we submit thy name, art thou in or not?”

Jeremy nodded enthusiastically. “Unless something goes stupidly wrong, I think I got it!”

9-20-13, 10:07 P.M.

The place was just as he remembered it – red, pink and all. He was let in first, along with the rest of the singers, and one such nudged him excitedly. “You giving her a response? Alright, good. Me, I’m pretty nervous, but I think I can pull it off,” he chattered. Jeremy wasn’t exactly calm himself, but he looked the pony straight in the eye.

“Relax, you’ll do fine,” he said, and the pony visibly calmed down. To his surprise, it looked like there were some reporters hanging around the entrance to the stage area – and they were pressing for interviews. A yellow mare in a fancy suit trotted up to him.

“Hi, I’m Starshine,” she said breathlessly. “We’d love to put you in for an interview in the Manehattan Times – are you interested?”

Jeremy was a bit taken aback by her excited manner, and frankly more than a little confused. “…Sure?” he said, not really conscious of what he had just signed up for.

“Great, I’ll see you right here at six o’ clock tomorrow!” she said, and sped off again. Jeremy frowned. He would have to make a note of that. Also, did he just agree to an interview? Ugh. Jeremy really hoped it wasn’t too sensationalist.

Cadance was there, and she smiled at him as he went backstage to wait with the others. Discord gave him an enthusiastic cheering from the middle of the crowd, and just before he stepped out of view, Jeremy mockingly blew him a kiss, to which Discord pretended to blush and fall over. Two could play at that game. Sitting backstage with the others, Jeremy waited.

Finally, it was his turn. Jeremy confidently walked on stage, and right on time, his suit started playing. Jeremy started singing, and caught the eye of Luna, who was so far backstage as to be almost invisible. For a while, all he could perceive was the sound of his own voice and the look on her face – it was almost like the bloodlust he had demonstrated earlier, except this felt really good, and he didn’t feel like he was about to pass out. “Tell me again, was it love at first sight? When I ‘walked by’, and you caught my eye… Didn’t you know love could shine this bright? Well, smile because you’re the deer in the headlights!” As he looked on, Luna was visibly sniffling – hopefully out of joy, or something. He decided to put it out of his mind and keep singing, and it was as perfect as he could hope for.

Next Chapter: Chapter 13* Estimated time remaining: 10 Hours, 48 Minutes